Another blast after 'deadliest' Boko Haram attack in Nigeria

After 2,000 died in the Baga attack on Friday, 16 locals lost their lives in Maiduguri explosion yesterday

Aabuja: Yesterday, a bomb explosion in a Nigerian market in the northeastern city of Maiduguri killed at least 16 people and injured 20 more.

A security source said at least 11 people were killed and 24 injured by a bomb that went off at 12.15 pm. Civilian joint task force member Zakariya Mohammed said, “There are 27 injured people in Borno Medical Hospital while more were taken to other hospitals,” he said.

This comes after hundreds of bodies were blown up in the town of Baga on Friday, which Amnesty International described as the “deadliest massacre” by the militant group.

“Fighting, which started Wednesday, continued till Friday in Baga, a town in the northeastern Nigerian state of Borno on the border with Chad where Boko Haram fighters seized a key military base on January 3 and attacked again a Wednesday,” said Mike Omeri, a government spokesman.

Open fire on residentsSecurity forces have deployed significant military assets and conducted airstrikes against militant targets. According to another official most of the victims were children, women and elderly people who could not run fast enough when fighters drove into Baga and fired rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles on town residents.

“The attack on Baga and surrounding towns, looks as if it could be Boko Haram’s deadliest act in a catalogue of increasingly heinous attacks carried out by the group,” Daniel Eyre, Nigeria researcher for Amnesty International, said.

“If reports that the town was largely razed to the ground and that hundreds or even as many as two thousand civilians were killed are true, this marks a disturbing and bloody escalation of Boko Haram’s ongoing onslaught against the civilian population,” Eyre added.

Over 10,000 people were killed last year alone in Boko Haram violence, according to the Washington-based Council on Foreign Relations.

More than a million people are displaced inside Nigeria and hundreds of thousands have fled across its borders into Chad, Cameroon and Nigeria.